Suggests when you drive with your own car in CZ (and in SK as well..)
So far as I always went to CZ and SK by my car I think I can share my experience.
First of all the biggest problem is not the police, but the thieves!
I remember a couple of years ago when I went to Slovakia to meet a friend, he was at home of another friend and when I went there, there was inside the garage an AUDI A6 allroad quattro with Austrian plate...
Two guys were talking about the main paper of the car and another one starts to take off the plate...I understood everything immediately and I asked more.
One of them asked me if I wanted to buy it, for the friendly price of 10.000 euro,very good price! (even if surely I will never buy something stolen..).
I asked what about the plate? He told me in less than 10 days, the car will totally reborn again with Slovak plate and Slovak paper, totally new numbers on engine and chassis too!!!
Then my friend told me that the one who robbed, was one of the biggest thief and he often went to Austria and to Czech to rob foreigners car.
He had friend in police and in the VW Bratislava and in the office where stamps the plate too,so with tip he could make every car reborn again without problems!
However what interested me best, was how could they rob the car and from where?
To make long short, this poor guy parked the car in the parking of the hotel, then after dinner he asked for a taxi and the receptionist called a friend-taxi...
The taxi man called the receptionist and explained he took him to nightclub and called another time once the owner of the car went in bedroom upstairs with the girl and she immediately phoned to the guys who went to rob the Audi!!!
And me that I am very curious as a monkey ;), I wanted to know much more...
In my car I had a bottle of wine and I told to the thief, hey you got lucky, you was good, we have to party, do we drink it? (trying to make him friend with me..).
He surely not refuses and we ended to drink all together the wine and he explained to me everything, that to rob every car from the "mother" Volkswagen is so easy as to drink a glass of water!
No matter if it is a AUDI A8 or a SEAT IBIZA 1,2 benz, he need less than couple of minutes if he is not drunk, these the words he said!
Cause every AUDI,SEAT,SKODA and VOLKSWAGEN have the same shitty stupid childhood kind of immobilizer and once he broke the lock in 2 seconds, he need not much more time with a PDA connected to current-tap, where the mechanic test the car, to get the right numbers of the immobilizer!
He even told me that it is much more difficult to "broke" the immobilizer of Renault Clio or Oper Corsa than Audi!
He told me that most of turists who go to SK, and to CZ too..., do not have alarm on their cars and they think are safe just to park cars in parking of the hotel...
Nowhere your car is safe from the moment it goes far from your eyes...but to give an alarm to the car, even the cheaper, improves the safety,cause the thief has really to want your car if he chooses to rob a car with alarm and often he prefers to rob another one without alarm.
He wanted to teach me to rob car too, cause he said, I can for a joke to rob the car of my friends at my home....crazy guy and I said I prefer to rob...virginity! :)
All this to say, police is the smallest problem if you are there with your own car...
I try to write some suggests:
- Try to choose a bit expensive hotel instead of cheap one, it offers a bit better chances of safety for your car!
-Everytime in the evening I went out of hotel without car, I try to have a little conversation with the night-guardian of the parking or at least with the person at reception. I say I love the CZ, or the SK, nice country, wonderful girls and good food, trying to make him/her a friend.
Often I offer cheap bottle of wine too or I tip with 5-10 euro the first night of my stay there and I say with smile:" it is the only one car I have, tomorrow morning I will be happy to see it again!"
To make understand that I know how it works there....
Most of times for the receptionist it doesn't matter to make rob a car today or tomorrow, yours car or another one...
-Never go to CZ-SK without insurance that will pay you if your car will be robbed!!!
-Maybe they seem to you only as naive suggests and maybe they are, maybe I was only lucky, but in 9 years of travelling my car never been robbed...
(yes one time my plate was stolen, but it was in the little city in south moravia, I went there very often in that period, everybody knew me and the husband of my lover as well...).
Police: I have been stopped tons of times and at the beginning they tried to make me pay big prices too....year after year I became "a little" smarter....
It seems that nobody foreigner, besides me ;), knows that in CZ and in SK exists the law that you do not have to pay immediately,but you can go to post office the second day to pay...
Surely you need a little language to start a conversation about this theme,cause police man tend to get immediately nervous everytime I said this! :)
However it always works for me and very funny that the last time I was from Prague went across the border with SK 2 weeks ago at 1:20 AM the "good" policewoman noticed me that I have still 2.000sk to pay from the year 2.005!!! Maybe I am not able to find a post office in 24 months? LOL
So again some little suggests:
- do not worry if stopped, be very relax and once they write how much you have to pay show that in your wallet you have no bancomat,no credit card and only 1.000 cesky or slovensky koruny and if they say it is not enough so...
- say:" daj Te mi pokuta na blok,prosim Vas,nemam se mnou moc penize! Zitra jdem na posta zaplatit" (please write me to the paper,I do not have much money with me, tomorrow I go to post office to pay).
-if they refuse little money also say you do not understand and you want to go to your embassy, often they will accept if you show you really want to go to embassy!! It works many times with me, why it doesn't work for you too?
-show that you have...all the time in the world, be patient and they will be happy to get little money...much better than zero money! LOL
I hope it helps!
Cheers fellow mongers.